


Flagrantly Forlorn Family Feud

by Ihsan997



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Aunts & Uncles, Bitterness, Class Differences, Dysfunctional Family, Family Bonding, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Loss, Family Reunions, Gen, In-Laws, Reunions, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Rivalry, Siblings, Sith Empire, Sith Pureblood, Sith Shenanigans (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22921672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ihsan997/pseuds/Ihsan997
Summary: On the battlefield, the Sith Lord Xuvas is a master of combat and manipulation of the Force. At home, he’s just another participant in arguments at the dinner table. After years of dodging reunions, he’s compelled to finally attend one get-together of his relatives and face The family feud which has been left to simmer for far too long.
Kudos: 9





	1. End of the week, midday

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t own Star Wars.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This takes place on a family estate outside of Kaas City, not in a playable location of the game SWtOR. And so starts the drama.

Lord Xuvas took a deep breath before stepping through the gilded gates of the palatial property, hiding his head beneath the hood of black robes which appeared drab in comparison to the opulence of the gated compound. Negativity was the pureblood’s fuel on the dark side, yet this sort of anxiety wasn’t the kind which empowered him. Every step he took down the quaintly paved walkway toward the residential area of the lightly forested compound led him further and further away from his comfort zone. How ironic, to be a Sith Lord whose strength waned in the face of stress. The stress he felt as the faux-retro style of the estate’s wood and stone towers loomed over him wasn’t that of battle fervor or the rush of hyperspace travel; those experiences, and any like them, would have energized him.

This, however, was very different.

This was a weekend at his childhood home.

Trailing behind him, a trio of Duros servants hurried to catch up on the pavement, warily eyeing the seemingly domesticated vine cats beneath the palm trees who nonetheless watched the newcomers with lazy gazes. A final single gate marking their entrance to the reception dome proper sent a surge of discomfort through Lord Xuvas just as the sight of the vine cats had sent a surge of fear through his servants. He clung to their fright through the Force regardless of his fondness for them, hoping to anchor his psyche in the pain of others just long enough for him to maintain his composure in front of the last people on Dromund Kaas he wanted to see: his family.

The reception hall betrayed the pretentious, neo-throwback style of the false wood exterior: entirely made of metal with the floor-to-ceiling drapes colored like an ancient mountain cabin, the domed hall represented the fake ness he resented so much not only in his relatives but in the Kaas City elite as a whole. Even in a private family compound several hundred miles from the capital of the planet, he couldn’t escape the delusions of tasteful décor he’d grown up around. The Duros in his employ huddled behind him with his belongings for the weekend sealed in hovering containment units, unsure of what to do when their master was so stoic and uptight.

Without making any attempt to announce his presence, Xuvas began a battle of wills with an invisible - and perhaps imaginary - foe. Past instances of stubborn refusal to acknowledge each other replayed themselves in his head now that he would be hosted by his sibling, driving him to stand there at the reception. At no point did he make any calls, send any messages, or even speak out loud to announce his presence; for the better part of five minutes, six minutes, seven and a half minutes, he stood idly in the garish hall and stared down the security camera, making a point that would seem pointless to anyone who hadn’t grown up within those walls.

When footsteps heavier than what he’d expected approached, his discomfort transformed into anger. He was grounded in reality and repossessed of his mental fortitude, but his anger would be incomprehensible to anyone else. By the time Xuvas’ brother-in-law had responded to his image on the security cameras and received him in the hall, the sour-faced visitor had begun to grind his teeth.

Another pureblood but of minor rank in the vast Imperial hierarchy, his well-dressed brother-in-law regarded Xuvas with a professional decorum more befitting an office environment. “My lord,” said Ossis, his sister’s husband, while bowing respectfully to the actual member of the Sith Order. “We’re honored to receive you after so long.”

Unable - and unwilling - to remain civil, especially when there were no witnesses, Xuvas made no attempt to play the game his sister was. “Is there a reason why Siqsanjat won’t greet me herself?” he asked to his brother-in-law. He could feel the man’s resistance through the Force, obviously defensive as a husband ought to be, but Xuvas was a sibling, not a stranger. Ossis didn’t rise to the unsubtle challenge.

“May the Force mend the blood ties between sister and brother,” Ossis replied while maintaining a downward gaze. “The situation isn’t as bad as you feel.”

At least passively Force-sensitive as most purebloods were, Ossis correctly referenced Xuvas’ ire, though the Sith Lord wasn’t placated so easily. However, his brother-in-law wasn’t the cause, and he maintained that ire in a dormant state for the time being. “I appreciate you coming all the way out here to the reception hall,” Xuvas replied without directly replying, though he ensured that Ossis would remain wary of him. “I assume that there’s a place for me to sleep.”

Ossis finally looked up at him, the man’s eyes pleading. “This is still your house, any time you wish to visit. I’m the guarantor of that, even if she raises issue.”

The two of them lingered for only a moment longer before Xuvas simply nodded, granting a token gesture of subtle approval, before instructing the Duros to take his belongings into the guest house of his sister’s mansion. This was already looking to be a long weekend, and he didn’t know how to stop making it even worse for himself.


	2. End of the week, late afternoon/early evening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins...

Xuvas found himself standing alone, in the late afternoon, on the synthetic wooden back porch of the guest house he’d been placed in with his staff. Although he enjoyed seeing the vibrant green grass of Dromund Kaas after so much time spent in space, he felt constrained in the confines of the inorganic, inauthentic structure his family had erected so long ago. Even the heavy metal chairs on the porch were hoverchairs, floating about to simulate a weightless feeling which reminded him of space walking outside a starship. He longed for natural gravity again, and he would have ventured out onto the grass were it not for the dew and mud blocking him from the tree line of the family plantation. Finding little else to do, he laid down a stack of bath towels he’d pilfered from the master bathroom, using them as cushions over the porch.

On cue and just when he’d started to relax, one of his servants cleared their throat from the back door. “Yes?” he asked the little Duro, maintaining a professional distance in his tone of voice.

“Master, your sister has been trying to contact you,” the Duro said.

Glancing over to the nearest hoverchairs control console, Xuvas noticed that there wasn’t any projection visible. “I don’t see the projection-waiting signal.”

“Well, she didn’t send a holocall,” the Duro servant replied nervously. “She’s been texting your data pad. Constantly.” Xuvas sighed deeply and waved for his datapad, which the servant handed to him. “Can we stay in the guest house?” the servant asked bluntly and without pretense, exuding fear of the sister and feeding into Xuvas’ irritated resolve.

“For the whole weekend. If anybody attempts to assign you work, you remind them that I’ve forbidden them from entering until I leave.” He waved the Duro away after delivering his reassurance, wanting to be alone for what came next. Heart rate increasing, he braced himself for the onslaught of angry texts he knew to expect:

Please be to dinner on time.

Your fridge isn’t stocked. You must attend dinner in the main lodge.

Be on time.

Be to dinner on time.

Dinner is in an hour and a half, just a reminder.

Dinner is in one hour.

It’s less than one hour to dinner. Please respond.

You’re running out of time. Forty-five minutes is sufficiently early.

Dinner is approaching. You must come to eat with the family.

You’re running out of time. Don’t be late.

Where are you?

You must confirm attendance. Please be on time.

You have twenty minutes until dinner. Respect my hospitality-

The last sentence was all it took to push the doomsday button. Tossing his own datapad to one of the hoverchairs, Xuvas rose from the pile of towels in a cloud of furious fog, turned on the chair’s holo console with as much force as he could muster on a holographic button, and called his sister’s personal frequency. She only needed a few seconds to respond to the secret frequency she only allowed members of her household to use.

Flickering onto the chair’s projector was an image of a wall and half of a closet doorframe, and the furious fluttering of fabric could be heard as she prepared herself. Unlike her, Xuvas stood in full view of his transmission, arms folded behind his back as if he were about to reprimand insubordinate troops. Both of them radiated anger through the holocall.

“Are you trying to make some sort of a point?” Siqsanjat asked pointedly while she adjusted what sounded like a fluffy shoulder pad off-screen.

Xuvas met her unbidden irritation with his own voice. “I’m trying to settle in before I eat on a timetable quite different from that of my starship, in case you hadn’t considered that.”

She snorted as if her fingers had slipped while she adjusted her outfit. “You’ve been here less than three hours after not visiting for three years, could you please resist the urge to make a scene at a family gathering just this once?” she asked rhetorically, and acidically.

“I’ve never been the cause of drama here,” he replied, only to more snorting and tongue-tutting from her. “I received your messages and will be on time. You don’t need to message me again while I’m here.”

Her response was fast and furious. “First of all, no, you’re not going to be on time because you’re not even dressed.”

“This is fine,” he said while holding a loose fold of his black robe’s fabric.

“That’s what an apprentice wears when the rest of his wardrobe is at the laundry, you unkempt manbaby. Second of all, drama occurs when you arrive, therefore you’re the cause.”

“Your points are out of order both literally and figuratively.”

“Third of all! Third of all, if you want to sulk, then don’t do it here in front of my kids. You can carve out your own little man cave on Rhelg if you don’t want to be called.”

“I’m wearing this,” he replied before shutting off the holocall.

Before she could call back, he disabled the entire control panel on the hoverchair, put a pair of shoes on at the front porch, and started walking down the steps just as she started calling his datapad.

Without a single electronic device on him, he strode swiftly down the stony path from the guest house to the main lodge for a meal he wasn’t hungry for. As if to make a silent point which nobody would even witness anyway, he reached up and pulled a piece of fruit from one of the lower hanging trees lining the little paved footpath, peeled the skin with his bare hands, ate the flesh, and then tossed the rind in the grass. From a distance, he could see the main lodge’s front veranda and half a dozen distant relatives he never spoke to exiting personal atmospheric shuttles. Cutting off any possibility of resistance, he stepped off the path and onto the squelchy, moist lawn to the side of the lodge, finding the side entrance used by the scullery staff to access the fenced-off recycling station out back. A few members of the staff saw him coming, slaves of his family who remembered him as the one who never yelled or shoved, and they bowed in unfeigned respect.

Xuvas stopped at the side entrance into the lodge’s kitchen, regarding the various Duros and Twi’leks politely. “Welcome back,” a Duro dishwasher said, not averting his eyes due to fear as was the case with other members of the household.

“It’s a pleasure. Listen fellows, my shoes are covered in mud. Could you grab any unused pair of house slippers?” Without being asked, Xuvas gave all four slaves the remaining credits and holonet store discount cards he had in the pockets of his robes, luxuries most of them only expected once a year.

The group of slaves swiftly dispersed, competing not only to bring Xuvas a pair of dry shoes, but also to scout the lodge for a path to the dining hall unobserved; they all understood discretion very well. In a matter of moments, the janitor had brought a pilfered pair of indoor shoes, and the dishwasher had cleared the access hallway leading from the kitchen to the main dining hall for him. Unobstructed and unseen, Xuvas sneaked into the dining area, where several cousins he never spoke to were already seated.

Joining his distant relatives at the three-meter-long table, Xuvas merely nodded as they all bowed their heads to him. Overdressed and using practiced, feigned body language like many purebloods, his more noble family members still showed deference to him; they were all Force-sensitive, but none of them to the level of working beyond medical, research, or training jobs. Being a Sith Lord allowed him to sit at the elegantly decorated table in nothing but an overseer’s casual wear without comment. And that included, apparently, his sister.

All rose briefly when Ossus entered the room, his four bratty children overdressed like miniature adults in tow. All of Xuvas’ nieces and nephews were glued to electronic devices, and his brother-in-law made no attempt to intervene. “Siqsanjat sends here apologies; a client made an emergency call to her consultancy, and she must respond before she sets our household communications status to ‘busy,’” Ossus said in a stale, flat tone as if he were reciting a line.

As Xuvas’ had expected, none of their relatives took offense or even gave the matter much thought. A cousin from the other end of Dromund Kaas’ northern hemisphere, who’d flown a quarter of the planet’s distance to get there, shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s quite alright; there will still be time for dessert, yes?” she asked with such proper, Imperial-style manners that Xuvas wished she could’ve been born as his sister instead of Siqsanjat.

The others all nodded, causing their varied, ostentatious head and shoulderwear to flap and wave in contrast to Xuvas’ plain, undecorated robe. Just as he’d expected, nobody cared at a family gathering for only two-and-a-half days with less than ten people. He took his seat after Ossus did to show token respect, though it wasn’t lost on him that his brother-in-law avoided eye contact again; they both knew the real reason why Siqsanjat hadn’t attended, and that the sibling rivalry remained ongoing near its fourth decade. This would be a short weekend for everyone except Xuvas.


	3. End of the week, evening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mess with the bull and you’re going to get the horns. Those familiar with the drama of family reunions will understand.

By the time everyone had finished eating, they’d relocated a small hologallery which the family used to view their awkward and unnecessary videos and projection casts. Xuvas finished his meal last, eating slowly and nursing his drinks to ensure that he wasn’t expected to speak. Eventually, though, the sound of laughter reached him in the dining hall, and he knew that he’d have to attend without making a scene. With slippers which felt like lead, he rose and walked into the offensively colored gallery with descending seats like a cinema with an unusually low ceiling.

His cousins were seated toward the center as they watched is brother-in-law unethically replay holograms of patients from an infirmary at the same pre-Korriban academy where Xuvas had also once been an overseer. All of his relatives (except his nieces and nephews who’d mercifully disappeared) were seated in the central part of the room, and as much as he’d have preferred to sit in the back corner, he only knew that behaving in a withdrawn manner would draw more attention to himself. His plan succeeded, and none of the others took notice as he sat in a row of chairs just behind them in the home theatre.

Ossus in particular seemed to absorbed in the holograms he absolutely wasn’t supposed to be showing them. “Now, look at this one from last week…eighteen years old, but he’s crying like a baby over a single injection!” the brother-in-law said, his refined accent mismatching words more befitting an obnoxious game show host.

A few of Xuvas’ cousins laughed, though one of them seemed to share his unease. “Is it legal to replay these outside of work?” the relative whose name escaped the Sith Lord at that moment said.

“What? Oh, it’s not a big deal,” Ossus replied flippantly. “A kid like this probably won’t make it, anyway.”

Xuvas felt the muscles in his jaw tense in reaction to the flagrant disregard for protocol, but just as he was about to intervene, an even more unpleasant voice carried into the room.

“Oh look, I found this cart full of dessert! I wonder who left this here?”

Making her entrance grand and pristine as she always managed to do, Siqsanjat immediately became the favorite person of everyone in the room. Prancing inside as everyone turned to regard her, she led in a gilded hovercart pushed by downtrodden Zabrak slave. Everyone left the hologram running on the small stage as they turned to regard their hostess and her cart full of fruity pastries.

As if she’d risen to a sort of challenge Xuvas hadn’t even issued, Siqsanjat was dressed as if Darth Hexid herself were throwing a feast. Too many purple and yellow strips of fabric folded and laced through a single blue outfit, none of it seeming to match in her brother’s eyes, marked her overtly practiced and rehearsed movements as she made a big show of serving overpriced slices of cake to everybody one by one.

Disgusted by the grandiosity of an act as mundane as serving dessert, Xuvas rose from his chair wordlessly and, while pretending to help his sister, he hid as many dessert items as he could on a plate with a few napkins over them. He then shoved the hidden dessert into the Zabrak slave’s hands after using one of the napkins to visibly wipe his mouth. “Take this to the wash,” he instructed the downtrodden slave girl, who immediately understood what he was doing and scurried off with a mouthed ‘thank you’ while his cousins were preoccupied.

Ever mindful of his behavior, Siqsanjat noticed his attempt at stealth and, while maintaining verbal conversation with their cousins, simultaneously entered his mind. “Don’t spoil my slaves; you have no right,” his sister told him telepathically without even looking at him or otherwise hinting to the others that she’d taken notice.

Xuvas sat down without reacting, once again nursing the food on his plate to avoid having to actually talk to anybody. His family continued their pointless conversations about culinary reality shows without him, leaving him to wonder why he’d agreed to attend after so many years spent away from their entire geographic area. Every minute he spent in the seemingly cramped room as they expended oxygen talking about nothing felt like another minute he was tossing into the garbage can, and even the overrated fruity pastry he picked at couldn’t make him happy. Nursing food once more so he’d be left alone, he lost track of the time and was unprepared when his sister attempted to exact revenge for his drab choice of clothing.

“Brother dear, isn’t it true that you’ve now moved on to the Sphere of Technology in the Order?”

Caught off guard, Xuvas glanced up quickly, before his relatives even had the time necessary to turn their heads; thus, he witnessed the moment personally when his sister succeeded in flipping attention on to him at a time when he wasn’t prepared, and on a topic which he never wished to discuss with anyone. That Siqsanjat even knew about his career transitions suggested an insidious return of her hacking habit; Xuvas had enlisted help of an intelligence agent to wipe his social media footprint to a great extent, so his sister could only have tracked his career movements illicitly. Of course, he couldn’t say that without appearing like a bully toward his sister and her well-polished image as she sat in the center of the whole family, holding their older cousin’s hand and very much holding the center stage of their get-together.

A few of his cousins glanced at him in awe; all lost in the bureaucratic structure of the Empire, none of them had spent extended periods of time in active military duty aside from him; a measure of token respect was given even though they had no understanding of the things he’d seen or done, nor of the fact that a person such as him didn’t necessarily enjoy regaling tales of laser fire and corpse-laden battlefields. Their knowledge of the dark side didn’t extend far beyond pleasure and opulence, the positive aspects of passion, and their adulation was as unwelcome as his sister’s tight smirk which only he recognized for the true passive-aggression behind it.

“That’s interesting, because,” said Magda, a cousin who was older than some of the aunts in his enormous extended clan. “Because, now, if I remember…weren’t you, weren’t you in something different from that?” Magda breathed out at a snail’s pace, looking up at the ceiling as she tried to remember.

Xuvas raced mentally to concoct a method of deflection, but to no avail. “In the end, all work of the Sith Order is for the betterment of the Empire-“

“Yes, that’s right, he was previously in the Sphere of Philosophy,” Siqsanjat said in a feigned admiration so convincing, and so seemingly sincere, that Xuvas’ pulse shot through the roof; he was as certain of her insincerity as he was of the fact that everyone else in the room bought her affectionate sibling act. “He spent many consecutive years as an apprentice,” she said with emphasis on the rank for reasons only she and he understood, “before he tried to resign. Duty called back, though, and he was recruited again as an honorary overseer.”

Their cousins reacted only to the tone of her voice rather than the implications of her words, buying her imitation of a flatterer hook, line, and sinker. The attempt to embarrass him with his spotty, lackluster record as a Sith became readily apparent to him, picking at a wound which had never properly healed. “There are a few terms there which ought to be corrected,” he began, though she had the upper hand in terms of interruptions due to her better maintenance of outer image.

“Now, I wonder, Hadru,” she swiftly said, using his birth name just to continue poking the bear with a stick. “How was the transition from Philosophy to Technology? Those are two disparate, unrelated fields. I’m sure the story behind that is fascinating.”

Before he could mount a defense against her subtle assault, one of their youngest cousins piped up, inadvertently pouring fuel on the fire. “I’m actually interested in scientific development,” said another forgettable cousin who was barely out of his teens.

Siqsanjat’s eyes lit up when she found an unwitting ally in upsetting her brother. “Well, I think this is a prime opportunity for you! Why, Hadru here managed to negotiate a position for himself in the Sphere of Technology without any qualifications at all. In fact, I don’t think he’s studied the STEM fields a day in his life. Do tell, Hadru, what’s the secret to your success?” Her full-toothed grin afterward peeled the skin back from her façade of politeness, at least to Xuvas, and he realized that she was reacting to much more than his simple choice in attire.

As if he weren’t already being pressured enough to defend his poor life choices in front of relatives he did his best to avoid, Magda’s sluggish brain finally formed a cogent addition to the unwelcome discussion. “Yes, that’s, that’s interesting, Hadaaroo,” she said, using the diminutive form of his birth name which didn’t make sense when used on a person above the age of seven. “Didn’t you study…on Ziost, when you began your combat training, didn’t you study…part time, you studied business admin?” Magda asked obliviously to how she’d become a pawn.

“Well, think about all of this: business, philosophy, technology…how did you make it all work out, Hadru?” his sister asked, stirring a cup of tea at an irritatingly slow pace despite the fact that she hadn’t poured any sugar in it.

Backed into a corner which the others couldn’t see, Xuvas began feeling hopeless in the mere seconds which he had to answer his family. Triumphant and self-assured, Siqsanjat sipped on her tea with a light, almost inaudible slurp, glaring at him in a challenge slap the drink away like he’d done three decades prior when she’d slurped her food and drink around him. His insecurities were laid bare at a time when he thought he’d buried them deep enough such that nobody would ever find them; he was beginning to realize just why his sister had invited him out of the blue after so long.

He could have mounted a weak defense and gone through the half hour of dodging more strikes from his viper of a sister while their cousins in effectively tried to enter the conversation. He could have counter attacked, changing the subject and hoping that his cousins had decent enough manners to sense when he didn’t wish to speak. He could have made up a story based on false events so recent that his sister couldn’t have uncovered them, dealing with the consequences of her discovering his lies later. All of those options were viable, if not preferable.

In the end, however, he chose the nuclear option: he told the truth.

“There’s no story of success to tell because I have none.”

His cousins leaned in, giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he was trying to demonstrate a point through a play on words. Siqsanjat’s face lit up, conversely, when she realized that he’d done the unthinkable and confessed to a series of shortcomings he’d avoided discussing for many long years. Pleasantly shocked into silence, her jaw dropped open a little and her eyes glazed over like a child who requested a pony for her birthday and received an entire ranch instead. Her guard went down.

“Now that’s, that’s interesting, what do you mean by that?” Magda said without truly comprehending what he meant.

Blood rate rising, Xuvas worked to control his voice as he prepared a kamikaze dive aimed at his sister. “There’s no hidden message; my story is one of professional failure, as I said. True, I earned a diploma in business studies during my combat training, but my aptitude scores on Korriban directed me toward a pure combat role. The Sphere of Defense was full at the time, and I lacked the qualifications for P&L due to my low diploma scores, but the Order was required to accept me for membership due to my survival of all trials. They had nowhere to put me, and during my cohort, Philosophy had the smallest intake due to a high rate of acolyte deaths. My story is an example of where one ends up by simply surviving and doing little else.”

The seriousness in his tone confused his cousins, though they all listened intently. The true reaction, however, was from Siqsanjat. The acidic, spiteful pull to one side of her sneer was tight and gleeful in the beginning, like a sleen prepared to feast on a sick or injured prey animal. After years of sibling rivalry leading into adulthood, of many decades spent searching for reasons to argue every second they were around each other, his sister had thought she’d won. Hungry eyes looked on as he confessed to the truth she’d tried to hack for many years, their hunger continuing when the meal she’d recovered was inedible.

Xuvas could feel it more than he could see it. Siqsanjat was excellent at concealing her true intentions, but they were more closely related than the others; he could sense her through the Force even when she could hide her feelings from their cousins and her own husband. Her eagerness and joy remained even as her confusion began to grow, and he seized her pause.

“I did as poorly as one would expect; I’m no scholar, and the various schools of thought within Sith philosophy were beyond me by that age. There was no way I could have suddenly learned them all from scratch while also serving as an apprentice, and so I faked it…and my superiors found out.” Sighing and reclining, Xuvas reveled in the fact that not only were the others hanging on his every word, but also that he suddenly felt at rest when simply stating out loud what he’d hidden for so long. “I’m a blunt instrument and they knew it, and so they put me on the front lines in order to prevent me from publishing more sub-standard research articles. I was used as Darth Marr himself as a sort of attack dog, and was disciplined as such, and I attempted to quit after he publicly reprimanded me on Yavin 4.”

Stunned into silence, his sister proved unable to respond coherently enough to decipher his angle of attack, leaving their youngest cousin to perpetuate the figurative suicide pact between the two siblings and their reputations. “But…there is no resignation from the Sith Order,” what’s-his-name said, increasingly concerned as it became clear to the family that their supposed role model wasn’t joking.

“You’re right, young one; one doesn’t simply quit the Order. I fled off-world to a location where I likely would have awaited my own assassination had it not been for the invasion of the Eternal Fleet. I spent a few years isolated without interplanetary communications, winding up as good as dead.” Xuvas spied his sister in his peripheral vision as he spoke, noticing how furiously the muscles in Siqsanjat’s face struggled to maintain her fake smile.

“What are you doing!?” her voice shrieked at him telepathically, heard only by him and ignored all the same.

He continued, however, dragging her down into the whirlpool with him. “When the Eternal Fleet was destroyed, I was re-enlisted by the Order irrespective of my wishes. I was given a token position as an overseer at a feeder school in the capital city, primarily so my handlers could monitor my psychological fitness to be placed back in the field.”

Aware of his aim, Siqsanjat finally found the wherewithal to perform damage control. “An honorary position at a highly prestigious school, I might add!” she said a little too forcefully, and she sit a bit lower in her chair when she realized that her interjection had been improper.

Turning the tables, Xuvas continued to sting her prideful self-image. “Sith have no use for honor; only power, none of which I gained from the busy work I was assigned as they evaluated my condition,” he continued, bearing the burn of immolating his own reputation if it meant he could take his sister down with him. She attempted to ‘nudge’ him in the Force, a quick pulse mild enough such that only he or her children would have felt it, but he ignored her and her forced, increasingly weak smile. “I was eventually scouted by an attorney in P&L who needed a Sith signatory on a lawsuit which had been dragging on for years, and so I put my name down without ever showing up in court. He found a patronage position in the Sphere of Technology as necessary for my signature to be notarized, and here I am, in a rather comfy position I haven’t earned and don’t deserve, primarily due to nepotism.”

He counted milliseconds as he watched his sister’s own dismay wipe the insincere smile from her face and replace it with a barely-maintained blankness. He knew her better than anyone else there, and he knew that she’d been hoping he’d defend himself: to squirm, to obfuscate, to excuse himself while she methodically poked holes in an illusion which she’d assumed he lived in. Little did she know that the consequences of his actions, of the poor decisions he’d made, had long since eroded any pretensions he had of greatness. She’d provoked a different person than the younger brother she’d grown up with, a burned-out cynic who no longer responded to her challenges against his character. The realization was marked in the sudden subdued nature she displayed, uncharacteristic to her otherwise boisterous manner as she sank into her chair and allowed their cousins to take command of a discussion which was now embarrassing for her entire branch of their large family.

Xuvas had spoken so slowly that Magda had followed the conversation, her realization of his negativity dawning at the same pace as Siqsanjat’s attempted humiliation of her brother backfiring on herself. “Hadaaroo, that’s quite different from what I’d expected,” Magda said, entirely lacking the pretense of their hostess for the evening.

Nodding in affirmation and causing his sister to silently experience a meltdown in her chair, Xuvas gladly scuttled the reputation of his branch of the family, finding that there was little left to care for if he discarded the sparkling image of success he couldn’t have anyway. “As it was for me. But I hope this can serve as a warning for the heirs of the Sutta name,” he said while motioning toward his youngest cousin, the one whose name he couldn’t remember. “You take heed of my words and reclaim the victory of our ancestors. My own branch of the family hasn’t yielded success, but perhaps we can serve as a warning for you.”

Loyal to the way of the Sith as much as he was to their legacy name, the youngest cousin nodded without an ounce of hesitation. “I will learn from your example and make correct choices,” the young adult said, just as Siqsanjat veiled her presence in the Force and slinked away from the room in defeat.

Though Xuvas didn’t win, he ensured that both he and his opponent lost - even if that opponent was his sister. Satisfied that he’d made his point, he took another piece of dessert he didn’t even care for and broke his diet. “Tell us now, what your path is, and I will tell you if there are any pitfalls,” he said to his youngest cousin, who was happy to oblige as the remainder of the family listened and gave their own advice. Xuvas didn’t see his sister again for at least another hour.


	4. End of the week, at night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Commence the family drama from two people old enough to know better.

Shortly after Xuvas had finished humoring his cousins over dessert and drinks, he felt that he’d fulfilled his familial duties and took his leave from the indoor cinema. He had no idea what he’d do with himself for the remaining two days. To leave early would cause a scene, particularly after such a personal confession in front of his relatives, but to stay would feel wasteful given the fact that he had responsibilities within his new Sphere, however nebulous those tasks seemed to him. In the end, he chose to stay without engaging in discussion, making token appearances but otherwise not interacting.

On his way out of the main lodge, however, he heard the sound of stones skipping in the fountain which he once played in as a child - another tacky, faux ancient piece of décor which had been painted the color of faded stone. The familiar sound of stones skipping into the water reached his ears as he stood on the steps of the lodge, holding his attention as he recognized the sound as originating from the same hedged grove he once sought as a refuge from the expectations and responsibilities of his family. In any other circumstance, he would have continued walking and ignoring his family, but the retreat to familiarity maintained his attention. Even when he already knew that the stone-skipper would be the person he least wanted to see, he left the porch for the hedge grove anyway, quietly happening upon his sister as she angrily tossed the polished stones into the water.

Alone and visibly upset, Siqsanjat attempted to ignore him as he approached her, likely expecting him to gloat over his victory the way she would have were their roles reversed. Try as she might to give him the cold shoulder, he could feel her willpower waning in the wake of her symbolic defeat, and he found a conversation easy to begin.

“I’d prefer that we maintain lighter topics in front of the others,” he stated flatly, fishing for a response which came swiftly.

“That was light conversation, you bantha’s ass,” she replied acrimoniously. “Asking for the story of your career path is about as light as it gets, after the weather.”

Burned out from nearly four decades of bickering, he couldn’t maintain a façade the way she could. “We both know you were attempting to embarrass me in front of the others; let’s be honest. No one else is here right now.”

“Yes, no one else is here, and that’s why you’re suddenly pretending to be nice! I know you, Hadru: you’ve hated me, hated our family, and you always have.”

“I don’t know how you could grow up with me and still not understand me.”

“Oh really, is there more to understand, o great philosopher?” Siqsanjat asked while turning her head toward him with an acidic glare in her eyes. “Or did you have some misguided good intention when you systematically dismantled our entire reputation in front of our family?”

He shook his head at her, and he could feel her fury growing in response, bleeding out into the Force. “You think I’m a failure as a Sith, and you want the others to feel that way too. You’re just as responsible for our tarnished image in front of them…they just don’t know that. And it doesn’t matter because they aren’t here; it’s only you and me right now, and you know very well what you were trying to do.”

“I was trying to push you to become a better you!” she protested in a shrill voice which gave away the lie even more than her perceivable attempt to cloak her presence in the Force.

“Mhmm.”

“I want you to do something with your life other than breathing air you don’t even deserve. I want you to make something of this family! I’m at home with my kids, like Ossus, and…” Siqsanjat paused in order to maintain her composure, as she usually did when the topic of their older brother came up. “…and he’s gone,” she said, unable to speak their older brother’s name out loud. “All that’s left after him and mom and dad is you, just wasting your life and achieving nothing! You’re doing nothing! Everyone else in the galaxy bearing the Sutta name doesn’t even know who we are, we’re irrelevant!”

“And your means of encouraging me to be the way you want me to be, and live the way you want me to live, is by degrading me in from of those very same relatives whom you want to know us?”

“You’re a kriffing jerk, that’s what you are!” she shrieked so harshly that she lost her voice at the end of the sentence. Angry tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as any notion of rationality left the conversation. “You have no concern at all for our good name, and you don’t even have concern for yourself! You dress like a beggar, you have no career ambition, you only get haircuts once a month, and you still show your face in the capital knowing how little you’ve done with your life! You don’t even think for a second about how this affects the rest of us!”

As she raised her voice, Xuvas tried to focus his energy on what minuscule aptitude he had for stealth in the Force, working to blot out the sound of her yelling to anyone beyond their immediate vicinity. The skill was far from his forte, and he remained so preoccupied that the only phrase he could muster was “calm down” during her teary-eyed rant.

“No I will not calm down! Our family gave us everything we have, yet you squandered it! You had the best opportunities, the best education, yet you’re wasting your life! To tell my kids that their uncle is an alcoholic would be better than to tell them the truth about you! I, I, I have no roots anymore, not after the others all died, and you can’t even let go of old sibling rivalries from ages ago!”

“I’m not the one who invited the other just to humiliate them in public,” he protested, though in a far more dignified manner than her.

She wasn’t even listening to him as she wagged her finger in front of his face. “You! You do your best to ensure that I have nothing left of our name! You do your best to ensure that I’m cut off from any connection to our past! Mom and dad are gone, he, he, he’s gone too, and now I have nothing left to remember my old life with-“

Unable to bear the slurs any longer, Xuvas clamped a hand over her mouth. She struggled at first, but when she squeezed, she backed down and remained still, perhaps wary of what he might do. When he was sure that she wouldn’t yell anymore, he let go, leaving her as a steaming, weeping mess of a living being glaring upward at him. So rare between them, the silence felt unnatural even when it was his preference in most other social situations. An old, familiar gaze burned at him without a pause in communication even once she’d stopped talking out loud, recounting many years of cruel practical jokes and social sabotage which hid behind every curse she uttered. Her outburst was by no means random or unpredictable.

Just as guilty of the resentment and bad blood as she was, Xuvas found himself unable to express his negative emotions as articulately as he normally was. In any other context, he would have reveled in the chance for self expression, especially on a topic he felt as passionately about as a form of oppression he’d suffered under since the day he’d been born there on that same property. As he’d admitted to himself, though, his family ties were perhaps the sole weakness he’d been unable to purge from his soul. Siqsanjat didn’t realize how lucky she was. In a galaxy of trillions of people, her younger brother would have gladly extinguished any of them, planets full of them, as a normal function of his position in the Order, and there she was being permitted to verbally abuse him without so much as an admission of mutual guilt. Many of Xuvas’ colleagues would have murdered their own family members for much less (or even for nothing at all).

Dignified as he could be when upset, he did his best to maintain his perennially Imperial composure on the outside no matter how he felt on the inside. “You mourn so much for the family members you’ve lost,” he said, too hopeless in his relationship to his sister to even deepen the iron in his tone. She listened, however, the only consolation with which he could walk away. “Yet you don’t even cherish the one standing right in front of you.”

Her aura in the Force was so frayed and frazzled after her screaming fit that he could no longer accurately gauge her reaction. Angry tears glistened at him in her only response, and at the time when he’d have wanted to hear her response the most, she was finally, finally keeping quiet.

His kamikaze dive onto both of their images complete, he turned on his heels and left her to skip more stones into the fountain. Back in the guest house, he sealed all the doors, pulled the plugs on the electricity even for the air conditioning, and resigned himself for a twelve-hour sleep without even greeting his otherwise trusted servants.


	5. First day of the weekend, late afternoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An impulsive, immature adult sibling attempts to make amends.

Xuvas spent almost the entirety of the next day brooding in the guest house of what was once his own home. The group of Duro servants he’d arrived with wisely avoided interaction, remaining in their quarters until one of them mustered the courage to bring the choicest portions of the food they’d received from the resident slaves on the property and leave it on a plate in front of the door to the master bedroom. Xuvas didn’t even open that door and take that food until it had been sitting there for two hours, so embroiled was he in his proverbial pit of pestering pity. He expended so much effort not to mentally replay every moment in which he’d feuded with his sister in their childhood that he also couldn’t focus on anything else. With intermittent sleep and little stimulus, he wasted away all of the night and then the daylight hours, undisturbed until dusk approached.

Only when he’d completed a two hour session of staring at the ceiling did he sense a familiar presence in the Force - so familiar, in fact, that he could distinctly feel the fluctuations in movement as the entity drew closer and closer from outside the structure. The entity lingered on the porch of the guest house for a long time before he heard an impatient knock at the door. Impatient in regard to his sluggishness or the knocker’s own hesitation, he could only guess, but he rose from his unmade bed all the same. The Duros wouldn’t dare welcome a visitor without his permission, and with the electricity still shut down, there was no way for them to check the security systems and see who the visitor was.

Knowing full well who it was, Xuvas put on a brand new robe of the same exact design as the one he’d worn the previous day and walked to the power station control panel at the end of the guest house’s south wing, turning the electricity back on with a few switch flips. When the intercom embedded in the wall next to the panel crackled on, he didn’t wait for his sister to speak.

“I’m a bit busy,” he said brusquely and without greeting her.

To his surprise, Siqsanjat actually paused before responding. “I’d like to see you, please,” she said, neither replying to his declaration nor launching into a tirade as he’d expected. Her tone sounded forced, as if she were working hard to remain civil, and Xuvas only allowed his finger to hover over the ‘reject’ button for two seconds.

“Alright, just make it quick,” he replied.

Both of them waited until she realized he didn’t intend to open the door, much to her consternation. “Hadru, please let me in,” she said, again in a forced tone but without the acrimony he’d expected.

To pull the plug on the intercom again would have been so easy, and he almost did so, but her attempt to remain polite intrigued him enough to entertain whatever ploy she was undertaking. “Fine,” he replied tersely while he remotely unlocked the door. Striding down the hall, he intentionally slowed his pace right before he turned the corner so as to appear uneager. He didn’t expect an apology, of course, but he held out hope that she’d try to make amends. “Come on, come on in,” he said when he found the guest house’s sitting room empty.

The automatic door painted over like an old-timey non-motorized door slid open, revealing Siqsanjat dressed as if she were to go shopping, a sealed department store box in hand and the Zabrak slave from yesterday in tow. She left the slave to stand by the door while she seated herself in an uncharacteristically demure fashion. Her eyes were fixated on the coffee table whereupon she placed a gift box next to Xuvas’ datapad and then said nothing further. Xuvas sat down across from her, making no mystery of the disturbance he felt to his day of…well, laying around doing nothing.

“I assume you came to deliver this?” he asked with unfeigned disinterest as he placed a hand on the golden gift box.

His sister nodded, feathers on the wide-rimmed plumed hat she wore brushing in the air. “Open it,” she said, both masking her presence in the Force and withholding her outward reaction.

No longer in the mood for turning discussions into dejarik matches, he followed her instructions just so he could decipher her invariably hidden message and either thank her or ask her to leave. Inside the box was an artifact, also golden, which he’d never seen in his studies. A disc laid therein, with two linked bands extending from either side. At the end of each chain band were clips ostensibly used to fuse the object together, like a handcuff for only a single hand, though the tiny gears and gadgets inside implied that this was an ornament rather than a restraint. Numbers and dials moved and rotated inside, confounding him as to the ancient device’s exact purpose.

Intrigued by the unusual gift, he lifted it into his hands and let his guard down, confounded by where a pretentious socialite like Siqsanjat could have discovered such an intricate relic of the past. She must have spent quite a few credits to obtain such a dated object, and he began to wonder what her aim was.

“What…is this?” Xuvas murmured, curious as to the origin of such a bizarre machine.

Though she didn’t smile, he could sense her aura relaxing from the tension she’d been carrying, as if she…actually cared about his reaction. He didn’t know what had happened to her, yet he could tell that her concern for his reaction was real and sincere.

“It’s called a watch,” she answered, noticing his every move as he inspected the museum item. “The ancients wore these machines around their wrists, and used them to measure time within a singular star system.”

“This thing…Siqsanjat, this thing must date back to the Stone Age,” he murmured, awestruck by the small device.

“Actually, it’s an imitation, manufactured by Lariat Workshops. It’s modern, expensive, and highly functional.”

Perplexed by the need for a modern imitation of such primitive machinery, he stared at her blankly while feeling the craftsmanship between his fingers. “Why would you bring me such a strange thing?” he asked in suspicion.

She furrowed her brow in irritation responding to his suspicion. “Because it looks nice,” she replied indignantly. When he furrowed his brow back, she shook her head as if he were an illiterate laborer, but he sensed a great deal of mental fatigue in her, and she remained polite. “Hadru…appearances matter,” she said, rising from her chair to sit next to him. She manipulated the clips on the watch and took his hand, showing him how to wear it. “Even if they don’t matter as much as the inside, they still matter. Presentation will be judged, and poor presentation is a weakness easily purged.” She noticed him staring at her suspiciously instead of at the gift, as well as his residual resentment radiating into the Force. “No matter what happens, I want the best for our name. That means I must want the best for you, regardless of the past.”

He could sense her attempt to apologize without saying the words out loud, and so he resolved to be thankful for the gift without saying it out loud. “Your tone is different than it was last night,” he said softly while inspecting the watch.

Her face pulled tight as she fought to conceal her reactions. “Regardless of the past,” she repeated as her posture stiffened. Even with her attempt at aura concealment, he could feel her fear growing. She was afraid of what he might say, how he might react, of his possible rejection of her gift - and for him, that was sufficient evidence of her sincerity.

“I’ll…try to project a better image,” he said with a partially committal tone.

Her eyes lit up when he accepted her advice so easily. “Really, Hadru, you can do more without much effort. You didn’t even wash your hair today, I can tell.”

“I did wash my hair, I just didn’t brush it-“

“You’re wearing the same clothes you wore yesterday,” she added.

“When I find something I like, I buy ten pairs of-“

“You’re wearing only one sandal!”

Pausing and taking a deep breath, he tried his best to remain patient in recognition of her figurative olive branch. “I spilled pudding on the floor-“

“And you continued walking around without cleaning it up first?”

She stopped interrupting him when his annoyance spiked into the Force, accepting his unspoken warning. “So your tone has changed due to your concern for our family name?” he asked, coercing her into discussing their argument. Her unusual hesitation revealed her discomfort, a reaction he wasn’t used to seeing from her. “You understand that the 180 degree change in behavior causes concern about your mental state, correct?”

This time, she it was her turn to feel annoyed, both visibly and sympathetically. “Don’t talk about my med-“ She stopped herself, took a few deep breaths, and actually appeared to be counting internally so she could avoid yelling. He wasn’t sure if this were his sister or an imposter. “I want what’s best for the Sutta name, so I want what’s best for you.”

“And last night?” he asked, verbally pushing her into a corner.

Looking at his forehead so she could avoid looking him in the eye, she fidgeted and struggled to maintain her projected confidence in her body language. “I didn’t expect you to say the things you did. I felt shocked and upset. And hurt.”

There were numerous responses Xuvas had at his disposal. Lecturing her about her audacity for claiming victimhood, berating her for her inability to transcend childhood complexes, returning her passive-aggressive insults from the previous night - all of these were options. None of them would have changed her behavior, though, and Xuvas was grateful that he’d finally reached a point in life where he could stand back objectively and understand her.

“Thank you for the gift,” he said after leaving her waiting anxiously for a moment. Her relief was quite apparent.

“You’re welcome. I only wish for you to progress in your career, Hadru. I’m in the medical field, like Ossus; I can bring our legacy money, but I can’t bring prestige like a proper lord of the Sith could. We need you to show the rest of our lineage that we matter in this galaxy.”

“I get it,” he sighed, glad that she was being polite but tired of revisiting his mangled career path.

Siqsanjat wasn’t ready to quit, however - not as long as she thought he’d concede to more. “You need to truly commit to your new role in Scientific Advancement. Don’t just wander off and do your own thing irrespective of organizational goals, like you did when you were younger.”

“I already got it. I get it.”

“Take care of yourself if you can. Our red skin means that we’re judged as heralds of the Empire, whether you like it or not. You have to look presentable even if nobody will make comments to your face. The world is not your living room to parade around in a bathrobe,” she said while tugging on the sleeve of his black overseer’s robe.

“This isn’t a bath-“

“And could you please build a powerbase beyond your all your farms and cargo ships? Lucrative or not, being known a a legume baron doesn’t exactly scream ‘power’ when your enemies hear it.”

His brow arched in mental fatigue from her suddenly lecturing him. “I already have projects going on, Siqsanjat,” he replied quickly enough that she wouldn’t interrupt him again. “I don’t need your advice on that.”

She waved away his comment dismissively. “Hadru, you know I hacked your inbox a long time ago. You receive, what, ten messages a day? Most lords receive a hundred.”

“That’s because I had the tech guys encrypted my datapad. Specifically so you’d stop screening my messages, by the way.”

“Oh Hadru, I’m not interested in your private life, but you know I have to check on your efforts. I told you, I care; that’s why I check your inbox daily. You have nothing going on.”

“I own one-seventeenth of Upkezar!” Xuvas blurted out, finally tired of being the bigger person for so many years.

Her brow ridge furrowed skeptically, though not in a spiteful manner; she simply didn’t believe him. “That’s absurd…Hadru, I’m trying to be nice. I swear, this isn’t a situation wherein you need to defend yourself anymore. I’m only trying to…”

Siqsanjat paused when he annoyedly picked up his datapad and began swiping through apps for interplanetary holdings. His old competitiveness with her wasn’t surfacing so much as his desire to finally prove her wrong now that she’d let her guard down. A complex older than his time in the Sith Order compelled him to just keep her quiet, especially at a time when he knew he could breach her emotional defenses. In that sense, his actions were about as Sithy as they could get.

Intrigued, she rested a hand on her chin and leaned close, watching as he fervently flipped through photos and files of ownership with a frustrated frown on his face. Gradually, though with rather quick steps, her brows raised and her eyes opened wide.

“Hadaaroo…what the kriff…you hid this?” she murmured in disbelief at him actually owning more than a shuttle. “How in the hell did you hide owning…that’s an entire tectonic plate of a planet? That’s like hiding a mountain from the people who live on it - how? Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Xuvas continued flipping through technical illustrations of the property lines defining what he owned. “I told you, I was admitted to the Sphere of Technology based on nepotism; I joined a lawsuit between important officials who needed a Sith as a witness. Their case had been going on for seven or eight years, and as part of my presiding as a witness, they had to negotiate a position for me and put the tectonic plate under my name in order to stick it to the defendants. I didn’t tell you because I did no honest work to earn this and, well, you always dump on everything I do.”

“That’s not true!” she cried out while trying to grab the datapad from him. When he wouldn’t let her, she reached over his arms and started flipping through the photos. “I’ve always supported you!”

“Thank you for the watch, but you’ve literally never supported me until you came here right now. You’re jumping on my bandwagon after finding out that I finally own something nice, which I appreciate, but it’s insincere.”

Her aura bled out into the Force, and he immediately sensed that he was wrong; she wasn’t insincere, she merely associated support for family with their material success. “I came here to make amends, and you’re tearing up my efforts,” she said, staring at him with a look of grief on her face and radiating pain into the Force.

“I’m sorry, I take it back, okay?” He put an arm around her and hugged her close, letting his own guard down and forgetting her impulsive nature. “It was a wrong thing to say, forget about it.” Before he could react, she’d snatched the datapad from him and began flipping through all of his files. “Okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t offer to…let’s focus on the stuff I already unlocked-“

Her frown dissipated as she flipped through more of his files. “You own a whole peninsula on Rhelg?” she asked while ignoring his protests, holding his own datapad away from him when he tried to take it back. “Hadru, this isn’t fair, you should have told me last night so I could have made more informed comments. I forgive you, but it still isn’t fair.”

“You forgive me? Are you being-“

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she quipped while leaping up from the couch.

She was quite a bit faster than him, and he didn’t realize she still had his personal electronic device until she was halfway down the hall. “Siqsanjat, you don’t need my datapad to use the toilet,” he said angrily while rising from the couch. The door closed and locked behind her, offending his sensibilities enough that he lost his bearings on the situation. “Number one, or number two? Siqsanjat?” He hurried down the hall and banged on the door. “I swear, you better not be taking a dump while holding my datapad!”

After a few moments of her not answering, the slave girl standing near the door cleared her throat. “My lord…I believe that my master climbed out the window,” the slave said nervously, though not exactly in fear.

“What?” Xuvas exclaimed as he walked back toward the front door. Through the window, he could see his sister running across the lawn with his datapad in hand. “Damnit, Siqsanjat!” he yelled while chasing after her.


	6. First day of the weekend, early evening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Never underestimate the ingenuity of a conniving climber.

Running with one sandal, Xuvas chased after his sister through the springy grass between the various buildings of the family estate. Low-hanging branches whipped him in the face as he tried to reach her in the main lodge, and his family’s semi-domesticated vine cats delayed his pursuit by trying to pounce and lick his face. The fact that his sister could run so much faster than him resulted in her having a lead of a few minutes ahead of him to tamper with his encrypted files.

From a distance, he could see the lodge’s kitchen staff hurrying in and out of the side door, and Xuvas approached from that door instead of the tacky building’s normal entrance. His sister’s house slaves didn’t leave their rushed duties, merely bowing to him as they continued running back and forth between the door and the recycling plant.

“Where’s Siqsanjat?” he asked urgently once he reached the door.

Just as urgently, one of the Twi’lek boys juggled a stack of plates which Xuvas stabilized telekinetically. “She’s in the gallery, my lord!” the boy said while jogging nervously in place. The young Twi’lek looked like he needed to use the toilet, and the Sith Lord realized that something was afoot.

“What’s going on?” he asked to another Twi’lek, allowing the first one to go about his way.

The second one was exiting with a bag of refuse to add to the compost converter at the recycling station. “It’s a code blue, my lord!”

Xuvas tensed up, unfamiliar with the term. “We’re being invaded?” he asked in disbelief.

The second Twi’lek shook his head. “Worse: our master has declared an emergency cocktail party!”

Scenarios of what his sister might try to do with his encrypted data floated through Xuvas’ mind, and his eyes narrowed in determination. “Get me a new pair of house slippers,” he said while leaving his lone sandal outside.

Entering the busy kitchen full of frantic slaves, Xuvas walked barefoot toward the sink as the first Twi’lek cleared the area of stray dirty dishes for him. “Somebody get our lord more house slippers!” the boy yelled to the rest of the staff in the chaotic kitchen.

Driven to intervene in whatever plan his sister had concocted, Xuvas hiked his robes up, gripped the counter, and lifted his feet into the sink one after the other to wash the grass off of them with soap and water. The Zabrak slave girl finally caught up with him, giggling slightly at Xuvas’ behavior even while she brought him a towel to dry his feet off before he wore the new pair of slippers. He was beyond caring at that point, his utilitarian focus aimed at reaching the gallery as soon as he could.

Once he’d finished, he deftly squeezed around the emptied carts of desserts and drinks as they were wheeled back into the kitchen, implying that his sister had arrived so much earlier that she’d already served a course of food - along with the accompanying discussion - while he’d been running and shoving the vine cats off of him.

Down the hall, he could already hear the sound of conversation emanating from the gallery. One, two, three, seven people or so all spoke in multiple conversations, grating on Xuvas’ nerves as he expected the worst from his private dealings being revealed. As he barbed into the gallery, however, he was surprised in a way he hadn’t expected.

“Brother dear, come here!” Siqsanjat beamed from the front of the gallery, his datapad in her hand while she waved.

The entirety of the visiting family members were there, seated as they had been yesterday and watching a giant projection of his property on Upkezar in front of them. He could sense the reverence they held for him through the Force, filling the entire room while they watched him enter with renewed deference. “What is this?” Xuvas asked absentmindedly while taking his datapad back and trying to comprehend what exactly was going on.

Siqsanjat had already walked over to him and taken him by the hand. “Sith DO have a use for honor, brother; it’s humility that should be purged,” she said without explaining to him the context of whatever conversation had taken place before he’d entered. She then dragged him to the hologram and turned to face the others. “This isn’t a place where you need to hide your achievements, Hadru.”

Spontaneously, the young cousin whose name Xuvas just couldn’t remember stood up and bowed to the Sith Lord being dragged by Siqsanjat. “I accept your lesson in subtlety and concealment,” the youth said, also failing to explain the background of his statement in the wider discussion.

“This is how one ensures to always protect their achievements,” Siqsanjat said while raising a cocktail glass toward Xuvas, “and this is how you celebrate them!” she said while raising her own glass to herself in a smarmy, self-congratulatory manner.

Confounded beyond all hell, he leaned down to her while she addressed the others. “What are you doing?!” he whispered into her ear aggressively, though her mood was so elated that she didn’t appear afraid of him like she normally would have.

Her answer echoed in his mind. “Damage control from your stunt last night, genius,” she spoke to him telepathically without so much as flinching or even turning her head toward him. “Shut up and pretend your ‘I’m a big failure wah wah’ thing was an act or I’ll hack into your personals ad.”

“Oh kriff you!” he hissed into her ear, though nothing could bring her mood down.

Despite their impromptu cocktail party having started no more than five minutes ago, Ossus was already moving sluggishly when he stood up and raised his empty glass toward his wife and brother-in-law. “My Lord Hadru,” Ossus slurred, mixing up Xuvas’ title with his birth name in a supremely irritating way, “hat’s off to you for your ability to keep secrets.”

The rest of their family members all nodded and continued to eat, offering no other comments; Xuvas distinctly felt that they were more interested in the achievement than the achiever, though he didn’t know what exactly his sister had told them in the few minutes he’d spent trying to catch up to her. Leaving them all to chatter and eat, he turned back to Siqsanjat.

“How did you even get them all in here so fast?” he whispered to her while trying to pull her away from the holoprojection and the center of attention.

Her answers continued to reach him telepathically, ever more subtle than him aside from the fact that she’d just exposed his private dealings to a room full of seven or eight people. “They’ve been here since lunch; I only left them for a few moments to give you the watch.”

Turning and nodding toward Magda who walked by to excuse herself for a moment, Xuvas tried his best to look as if he and his sister weren’t discussing anything serious. “This is basically a big farce,” he whispered.

Siqsanjat smiled to one of their other cousins, giving no hint that she were involved in a mental conversation with anyone. “Your achievements are real; you’re just terrible at selling yourself, and you were too busy trying to take a dig at me last night. Now stop being such a grouch and try to actually enjoy the weekend.”

At first, he frowned deeply at her, greatly bothered by the invasion of his privacy. The admiration of the others, however, gradually impinged on his grumpiness; in a whole family of Force-sensitives, emotions carried over and spread. For the first time in his life, the black sheep who always ate and then disappeared at family functions had become the most popular person at the party, all without saying a word to the others.

Unsure of how to feel and with a great deal of discomfort at the unfamiliar position, Xuvas recognize the high note of the weekend and chose that to be the time in which he tolerated his family’s presence. Siqsanjat would technically win in their sibling spat, having salvaged their reputation and persuaded him not to perpetuate the conflict further…but her victory that weekend was the least painful scenario for him. Accepting the annoyance of her intrusion, and everyone else’s insistence that he cut his lonesome brooding short, were minor inconveniences.

“I’ll stay for ten minutes,” he sighed reluctantly.


	7. Second day of the weekend, early morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ending on a cheesy note with two adults finally adulting. Almost.

Xuvas ended up spending more than ten minutes socializing that night, tolerating conversation with his family for nearly an hour. Though the period of time wasn’t necessarily a record for him, he’d certainly spent a lot more time with them than he’d intended. Were he to be honest with himself, he’d admit that his night didn’t feel wasted either. He had, however, performed his duty in the figurative sense, and found no further reason for his presence.

On the very next morning, he’d woken up early and instructed his servants to pack all of their belongings, giving them only twenty minutes’ notice to do so. The idea that he’d performed a sort of requirement, no matter how much better the weekend had turned out than he’d expected, motivated him to make a swift exit. A lifetime of repeating the same behavior, however, meant that his plan was predictable to those who’d grown up with him - as signaled by the knock at the door before his servants could even begin hauling their luggage to the waiting shuttle outside.

Xuvas walked toward the front door and held up a hand for the three Duros to halt. “I have this; just use the side door and wait for me in the shuttle,” he told them.

“Yes, my lord,” replied the eldest among them, and the trio of aliens turned and walked toward the guest house’s service corridor.

Before he even opened the door, Xuvas could sense his sister’s presence. Her usual sense of antagonism when interacting with him, the one he’d grown used to all his life, was significantly reduced.

He opened the door and peeked outside, finding that Siqsanjat was alone and, given the early hour, still wearing a shawl and a pair of comfortable dress shoes without heels. “Good morning,” he said, attempting to speak before she could interrogate him. “You’re up awfully early.”

Ever the talented telepath, she waved away his statement. “You don’t have to pretend, Hadru. I know you’re leaving.”

Though her aura was pleasant, her reaction was too unexpected for him to believe right away. “You read my mind?” he asked without providing justification.

He could sense her laughing inside, though her emotional signature lacked mockery or scorn. “The shuttle still belongs to me,” she said while nodding over her shoulder, roughly in the direction of the atmospheric vessel. “I still get notifications even when you’re the one who makes a booking.” He was about to speak, but she raised a hand to him as he’d done with his servants a minute prior, unintentionally irritating him. “I’m not mad. Okay? I actually think it’s better that you go now.”

For a few seconds, Xuvas just stared her down, confused as to this sudden change in her behavior after three and a half decades. He always tried to escape family gatherings as soon as he could, and she - as well as the others - tried to prevent him from leaving early. Never in either of their lives had she asked him to leave, and hearing it stung him a bit. She obviously sensed his reaction even when his face remained stoic, and she reached for his hand to pull him out onto the porch with her.

“You misunderstand,” she said, feeling exactly what he was experiencing through the Force. “This is still your home for various reasons, not the least of which is the fact that you don’t actually own a domicile aside from your ship. I’d much prefer you moving your powerbase back to the Dromund System rather than Rhelg. You’re silly for doubting my intentions.”

“You’ve been so different for the past day; I’m not entirely sure what to expect,” he replied cautiously while she led him onto the lawn in front of the smaller house.

Her own unease slipped out of the barrier she always kept around her, for to confess that she truly was acting different would necessitate guilt or at least remorse for her initial attempts to embarrass him. Instead, she dodged his comment entirely. “The others understand, now, that you’re successful in your own right. They know what you’ve achieved, and now they’ll understand why you leave family gatherings early: you’re a busy man. You have quite a bit to manage. And so, if you slip off before everyone else, it will make sense.”

Taken aback by her reaction, he was unsure of how exactly to regard her; they’d been at each others’ throats for so long that he didn’t entirely know how to have a civil conversation with her. “I’m glad that my departure won’t cause problems,” he replied briefly.

“Not at all. I wish you’d visit home more often, but you have an excuse not to stay long. I want you to succeed, Hadru. I want you to do more with what you have.”

“I understand,” he said as they approached the shuttle together.

“And please take care of yourself. I don’t mean safety; nobody could threaten your life. I mean take care of how you present yourself. In the echelons of power, people will judge books by their covers.”

“I get it,” he sighed, relieved that she’d turned over a new leaf with him but tired of the lecture.

“I’ll help you promote the results of your own work within your Sphere.” He grimaced at her offer, but she only became more insistent. “Nobody will recognize your achievements if you just sit in a corner and ‘do your own thing.’ You’ll have to show off when you lead battles or fulfill objectives, and I know you won’t do that of your own accord. Call me and I’ll be your free PR agent.”

Though he felt disgusted by the notion of promoting his own work, he knew his sister was only trying to be helpful, and relented. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said half heartedly.

They stopped at the shuttle, and she looked up at him for a moment while his servants finished loading their luggage. She obviously knew that he wasn’t taking her offer seriously, but her usual ire at his recalcitrance was replaced by a measure of relief, even happiness, which he almost didn’t recognize.

“Remember that all you do is for the family; not just yourself, Hadru.”

Realizing that her newfound affection would turn more insistent if he didn’t give in, he nodded and gave her a token affirmation. “May the Force aim the spear of the left-handed god,” he said, quoting an old poem about their bloodline dating to more than three millennia. His comment, almost noncommittal, immediately garnered a sappy smile from her.

“Impale all who stand in your way,” she said in a prayer which people from less violent civilizations weren’t likely understand.

As Xuvas boarded the shuttle back to the capital city, he was able to turn his back on his sister without feeling an angry glare for the first time. Though not superstitious, he hoped she believed in her own blessing enough for it to become true.


End file.
